Long Religionsound Poems

Rastaman

Walter Rodney
One evening leaving the bamboo hall
Stood me
Impaled with questions
Die me
To the dead colonial dreams
Wiped my tears of history
And showed me
Rastafari wading through the flood
Making new footprints on old mud
Giving Africa a second birth
Telling heaven to a carnal earth

All I had known before
Was umbilical lessons from the drums
My heart
With the rhythm of languages lost
The dart
Of affliction quivering in the heart
The totem of resistance to the frost
Traced the dreadlocks to the Mau Mau
Far short of Canaan and the Nazarites law
Brought by Melchizedek from forest deep
Rastaman walking while children sleep.
Scree Bertram
Who remember him
Setting pearls before us
Blankets made of bulrush
Where the blackheart man could not find us

Only the troubadour
Could open the gates of Zion with his songs
The Idren sang here and passed on
O Bob, my dear Robert Nesto Marley
The children have not danced so long
The street is such a silent place
Filled with weary feet
We long to dance again
The sound of the Rastaman
We long to hear
The sound of abundance of rain
And see the Rastaman
Standing in the lightning
And giving praise
Yet though the Black Starliner delays